The second anniversary

Two years have passed since the outbreak of the revolution in Egypt. Today, there is no end in sight.

Since more than a week (I returned to Egypt last week for the first time since the end of October), a tense mood of anticipation and preparation for the second anniversary of the revolution has prevailed. There has been a lot of anxiety that the protests might turn violent. At the same time, Egypt has entered a renewed economical crisis. After receiving an IMF loan, the government has allowed the Egyptian pound to lose much of its value against the dollar, and has started to cut public subsidies and to increase taxes (although many decisions, rapidly and haphazardly declared and implemented, have been quickly withdrawn again). Numerous train accidents (whereby tens of people have died) have shown in what terrible shape Egypt's infrastructure is. Supporters of the leftist and liberal opposition entered a sense frustration following the success of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies in pushing through the constitution in spite of widespread protests in November and December. But today was their day, as they entered the streets again to revive the revolutionary movement against Egypt's new Islamist rulers. (The Brotherhood and their Islamist allies have abstained from demonstrations today, and the Brotherhood's press organ Freedom and Justice called citizens to celebrate the anniversary by building up the country.) It has been quite a day, and I'm not sure yet whether it has been a success or a defeat for the opposition.

Quite a day

In this sense of renewed anxiety, the second anniversary was expected to be a tense day, and a lot of people expressed the fear (and some expressed it as a hope) that there will be clashes. S., my host in Alexandria, originally wanted to demonstrate together with his wife R. and their children. But by this morning, R. decided that it was too risky to take the children to the demonstration, and stayed home with them. At noon, as I arrived at al-Qa'id Ibrahim, the customary starting point of demonstrations in Alexandria, I could see that a lot of people had thought likewise. Protests of the liberal/left opposition often have a high number of women, easily making up a quarter or third of the crowd. But today at al-Qa'id Ibrahim there were very few women and almost no children in sight. There were lots of people, but not as many as in some of the big protests against the Constitutional Declaration last November and December. Clearly many people had preferred to stay at home, fearing violence.

No route had been determined for the protest march today. Instead, various marches departed from al-Qa'id Ibrahim and other parts of the city into different directions, trying to make the protests felt all around the city. I met R., one of the active protesters who go to almost every demonstration since 2011. She was with a group of other young women and told that they were going to the City Council to see if there are clashes. I walked around the streets of downtown Alexandria that were filled with different marches. One of them was also heading to the City Council and I decided to go there as well. The City Council is a located in the former security directorate in Kom al-Dikka quarter, between the Roman amphiteatre (one of the city's tourist attraction) and the railway station, and it is one of the few visible sites of the central government in Alexandria. Arriving there, I found a police line blocking the entrance to the street, and a few hundreds of protesters standing directly in front of them. Here the crowd was different from al-Qa'id Ibrahim square. The people were young, many of them wearing Palestinian kufiyas and masks for protection against teargas, and there were lots of women. Here was the gathering point of the hardcore revolutionaries experienced in clashes with the police and supporters of the Ikhwan throughout the past two years. They had headed for the place where it was most likely that troubles would happen. And very soon, they happened.

The most recent group in the radical revolutionary spectrum are the black blocks which have very recently been established in Egypt following the example set by the autonomous radical left in Europe. They arrived on the scene in a moment when tempers were already rising after a protester had ripped off a part of the sign of the city council. Heading the march from al-Qa'id Ibrahim, tens of young people, dressed in black and carrying a large flag, arrived right in front of the police cordon and tried to push forward. From where I was standing I could only see the heads of the people, but a friend of mine who was in the first row told that between the protesters and the police, there was a line of thugs in civil who were taking orders from a police officer. According to my friend, it was the thugs who initially attacked the protesters who were pushing against the police line. From my point of view, I could only hear loud bangs and see that people started running. I ran with them for some ten metres and took cover behind a corner. As I took a look at the scene seconds later, tear gas was being shot from the side of the police, and rocks were flying from the side of the protesters. (It was quite an aesthetic sight, I must admit). A street fight evolved, and I moved slowly backwards with the crowds as more tear gas entered the street, while bit by bit more people entered the streed to aid the protesters. On my way, I heard comments like: “Look at what Morsy is doing to us!” I took a different street to walk back to downtown where I met S. and K., an editor and cameraman who was there equipped with a high-end camera to take photos and videos. We headed back to the Roman amphitheatre were we found rapidly growing crowds of protesters. Otherwise, the protesters would have headed for Sidi Gaber, but as soon as the clashes began, everybody's attention turned to the City Council.

By the time we returned to the amphiheatre, the protesters had been able to push back the police and occupy the street in front of the City Council. S., K., and I headed that way and arrived nearly at the point where the clashes had started, when tear gas started raining on the protesters again, and people started running back to the roman theatre. Shortly thereafter, clashes started in the side alleys between protesters and thugs in civil, stones were thrown both ways, and shots of birdshot were heard (whoever was shooting was apparently firing in the air, because all injuries reported were caused by teargas). The thugs on the side streets were pushed back, the numbers on the square increased and the radical revolutionaries with their kufiyas were joined by young men from popular quarters on motorcycles and armed with wooden sticks, as well as a big and mixed crowds of protesters, some of whom headed forward to face the police, while others stayed back to chant slogans against the government, and yet others carried bottles and spray bottles with medicine and vinegar to treat the effects of teargas. That treatment was urgently needed, because there was a lot of teargas, and it was sharp. According to people who had been regularly inhaling teargas in the past two years, this gas was sharper and worse than what they were used to. From then on, the clashes took a repetitive pattern: People would arrive on the square and push towards the police, teargas was shot (from quite some distance), and people were forced to retreat to breath freely, and as soon as the air was clean again, they would push forward again. At noon, the wind was blowing from the sea towards the police, but by the afternoon it turned so that the gas moved towards the protesters. While new marches kept arriving at the site, many people could not hold out very long in the gas and left again, and bit by bit the protesters were pushed back from the City Council to the square next to the amphitheatre. By 7 p.m. it was clear that the situation was going to stay that way, and we went to have a glass of tea with friends in one of the nearby cafés. In downtown of Alexandria most shops were closed, with the exception of snack food restaurants and cafés - and those were crowded with protesters taking a break.

We took the minibus back to Mandara, and at home on television we could see that the situation in Alexandria was calm in comparison with Suez where several protesters and one policeman were killed later this evening, and late at night the army entered the city to restore order. And during the evening, also Tahrir Square and its surroundings have witnessed clashes, teargas, and shooting. In other cities there have been demonstrations and clashes too, and several offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party have been stormed.

A friend of mine who stayed in the protest until the end, reports that late at night, as the numbers of protesters had significantly receded, the police started arbitrarily arresting people in downtown Alexandria.

Oppositional attitudes

Today's clashes did not come as a surprise. The demonstrations between the Constitutional Declaration and the constitutional referendum in November and December witnessed an increasingly sharp polarisation, as well as a growing amount of violence. However, that violence was mainly between supporters of the government and the opposition, and the police was rarely involved. Now it is between protesters and the police again. Since a few weeks, Egypt has a new Minister of Interior, invested with the power to make the police work again. And unlike in November and December, the police is now working hard in support of the government again, and the gestures of deescalation that could be seen in December, were quite absent today. The police is back very much in the shape in which it was seen during the first days of the revolution.

However, the violence was partly also due to a change in the attitude of a big part of the leftist and liberal revolutionaries. These are the circles I know best in different social contexts, be it in the leftist intellectual scene, teachers in the poor suburbs, and supporters of the revolution in the countryside. Among people in these milieus whom I have met during the past week, there is a striking shift in attitude between last autumn and now. Critical distrust towards the Muslim Brotherhood has given way to outright hatred. And a lot of people have lost faith in peaceful action. H., a determined revolutionary from the village says that he is against the old system, and against the Brotherhood, and that he is ready to pick up a fight with both anytime. Another man from the village claimed in the heat of a debate in a café that the only real solution would be to go from house to house and kill the Brotherhood members. An artist from Alexandria, when asked whether he was going to demonstrate on 25 January, told: “I only go if there are clashes.” The failure of the opposition to force Morsy to make serious concessions after the Constitutional Declaration or to thwart the Brotherhood's constitution in the referendum has made many people feel that the only way to change things is through direct confrontation.

This view is contested by many others in the revolutionary spectrum who argue that such confrontation will only lead to the loss of the popular support which the opposition has been able to mobilise since Morsy entered office in the summer. They are also worried that the polarisation between the Brotherhood and the opposition compels the revolutionaries to make alliances with the wrong people. In a meeting of teachers and poets in a café in Asafra some days ago, these were highly contested issues. One of the people in the round argued that we should criticise the Brotherhood for their real mistakes rather than spread wholesale enmity against them because such wholesale rejection would only make the opposition to the Ikhwan lose its credibility. Another person in the round accused the first for heeding sympathies for Brotherhood, which the first of course denied. A third argued to me that he was very worried that the National Salvation Front that was formed by various opposition groups in November was also accepting former NDP members candidates in the future elections. He believes that the revolutionaries alone will be able to gain sufficient popular support, but they have to do it the right way. For him, no enmity towards the Brotherhood would justify alliances with the old system: “I know the Islamists want to hang me on my feet and lock up my wife and prohibit my daughter from going to school. But the guys of the NDP killed our people. If it is the Brotherhood against the National Salvation Front with people from the NDP in their rows, I won't go to vote. If there is a clean revolutionary list with not a single person from the old system in my electoral district, I vote them.”

And indeed, revolutionary opposition by peaceful means has not really failed. This was pointed out to me by N., one of the village revolutionaries, at a meeting of friends in a café in the village. As the discussion inevitably turned to politics, H. stated clearly: “We failed”, and added that while he was convinced that he was on the losing side of the battle, he would fight. Another in the round agreed with H.: “There must be a fight.” But they were contradicted by N., who argued that actually the campaign against the constitution had been very successful in the village. The outcome of the referendum in the village including the rurrounding hamlets was 47% no against 53% yes, and with the inhabitants of the hamlets voting largely “Yes”, in the village itself the “No” vote actually had a majority. Compare this to the 63% victory of the Yes-vote nationwide, and to many rural provinces voting “Yes” with more than 80% of the vote. For N. the question was not about fight, but about winning over people. Some people voted No just because they were against the Brotherhood, but even without them, the revolutionary current enjoyed sound support, he argued. And among those who voted “Yes”, there were people who could yet be convinced. Convincing the people – that was the task according to N. He was contradicted by H.: “Convince the people! You're joking!” N. replied: “Yes, I know how to convince people, seriously.” What emerged in the discussion between N. and H. is a split between two oppositional attitudes: One of a principled rejection and determined struggle for the sake of the right thing, even if one knew one was losing; and another of a search for ways to make partial gains in a struggle over people's minds and hearts.

Getting high on teargas

However, the split between principled rejection and pragmatics of persuation is not enough to interpret today's events and the shifting attitudes among the revolutionary spectrum. Had N. been able to come to Alexandria he would have joined the protests. For him, convincing the people in his village and fighting the government in the streets do not contradict each other. L., one of the teachers whom I met in the café in Asafra some days ago and who took a cautious and non-confrontative stance and rejected the idea of Egyptians fighting each others, was among the protesters today. Although he was critical about the way the escalation of the protests had made them less capable in gathering mass suport, he went and inhaled his dose of tear gas at the City Council as well: “My friend and I went as far into the gas as we hated Morsy. I hate him 75% so I only went so far, my friend hates him 200%, so he went further ahead.” Both those who search for a common ground as well as those who no longer believe in peaceful action were inhaling tear gas today, and described their doing so with a certain sense of enthusiasm. There is a sensual quality to protess and clashes that attracts and transforms people. And teargas is its most explicit symbol. (I wrote about the longing for the smell of teargas already in November 2011, but after inhaling a good dose of it today, I think there is more to be said about it) Shortly after the clashes began I ran into E., a musician from the intellectual leftist scene, his face already white from medicine spray against the effects of teargas. I offered him a sandwich that was left over from my lunch. He replied: “No thanks, I'm getting high on teargas.” Later the same day, another person commented: “Egyptians have become addicted to teargas.” Getting high on teargas is in fact a running joke that I have heard several times today. But inhaling teargas is actually very unpleasant. One's eyes and face burn, one starts to cough heavily and it becomes difficult to breath and see. All these unpleasant sensations are combined with a general sense of confusion as people start to run away to avoid the gas cloud, and one has to run along while coughing and trying to keep one's eyes open. Heavy exposure to teargas can be lethal. How could one get addicted to something so unpleasant?

The first time one faces teargas, the reaction is to run. There is a sense of panic. Today, people were mostly walking away from the gas cloud in an orderly fashion and then walking back as soon as the air was clear. It becomes an annoyance rather than a hazard. And most importantly, getting exposed to teargas without being defeated by is part of the formative experience of protesters for whom demonstrations, sit-ins, and clashes are among the most beautiful and meaningful moments of their life. The people I met at the protest today were angry and upset, but they were not frustrated, not depressed, not cynical. They knew that they were struggling for the good cause, and they were surrounded by friends and like-minded people. While the protesters moved back and forth towards the police and then away from the gas, they were at the same time involved in countless warm-hearted encounters with friends, shaking hands and hugging, joking and exchanging news. Coming together in struggle makes life meaningful, and teargas is an olfactory embodiment of this experience.

What comes in place of fear?

However, even this is not quite sufficient. There is yet another aspect that is important in order to understand the escalation of the events today. And contrary to tear gas addiction, it is one that is shared by a much wider part of Egyptians: loss of fear. The by now proverbial “breaking of fear” that marked the outbreak of the revolution has been widely cited as one of the few true accomplishments of the revolution. It is not simply a condition of fear or no fear, however. Many people were afraid to join the demonstration today, while others were not, and yet others were looking for confrontation. S. who is not a hardcore protester like R., but who has nevertheless participated in numerous protests in Alexandria since 28 January 2011, noted to me today that back in the first 18 days of the revolution, he was much more afraid than now. “Today, we were standing in the middle of the street watching the fighting in the side alley. We heard several shots, and saw a guy on a roof with a gun. But we didn't think about running away or taking cover. We were tense and anxious, but we weren't afraid.” In the course of the past two years, a part of the revolutionaries have grown quite fearless, not only in demonstrations but in their lives. Many of them have started to live much less conventional lives, and have stopped to worry about what others say. But I also know of people who have turned violent in their domestic lives. And there can be a lot of trauma underneath the loss of fear. So things are rather complicated, and the loss of fear is not always a good thing. It breaks much of the reflexes of oppression people had once internalised, but it can also do quite some damage. Loss of fear is not an accomplishment in its own right. The question is: What comes in its place?

After two years, fear has not simply been replaced by positive sentiments. Instead, the prevailing sentiments are anxiety and unrest, mixed with hope and emboldenment (See also my post from March 2011 where I thought about anxiety). If the first months of the rule of Muslim Brotherhood were marked by a period of certain relaxation, since November anxiety and nervous tension are in the increase again, and today has marked another moment of escalation. A question that remains is: Where will this escalation of anxiety and unrest lead to? Does it help the revolutionary opposition in excerting effective pressure, or are they losing support of all those people who do not want to be part of a destructive escalation and polarisation? Will it help the Muslim Brotherhood in presenting itself as the constructive power, or will it further undermine its already shaky legitimacy? Is it part of a necessarily antagonistic struggle on the way towards a better Egypt, or is it a destructive power that may eventually bring back the same kind of criminal rule that wrecked the country for decades?

This morning, S. was sceptical. He said that all the talk about the loss of fear was in the end only serving the Muslim Brotherhood to conceal the fact that the revolution has changed nothing. But tonight, after returning home from the demonstration he said: “I'm certain that after all these struggles, Egypt will one day be one of the fines and freest countries in the world.”

After one hundred and a few days

Not yet

Taking the minibus is one of the best ways to know the general mood in Egypt. Soon after my return to Egypt two weeks ago to continue my research on literary and creative trajectories, I was on the countryside on the way to visit friends, and the passengers of the minibus wanted to know what I think about president Morsy. “I haven't seen enough from him to make up my mind,” I answered in an evasive manner. “You won't see anything from him anyway”, one of the passengers replied, and the driver – for some reason he insisted on taking me for an Egyptian – asked: “Come on, don't be afraid to say your opinion. Whom did you vote?” On this minibus, the opinion prevailed that Morsy is a good-for-nothing, but on other rides one encounters people who think that he is doing a good job, that the streets are already safer, but that he needs more time. Two days ago in Alexandria, a passenger wearing a short, well-fashioned beard of the style common to Muslim Brothers, involved me in a discussion about the European perception of Islam, and then went on to argue in support of Islamic economics and the prohibition of interest in banking. I said that I'm quite sceptical of Islamic economics when Egypt's new Islamic government borrows money from the IMF against interest, and sells state bonds with a lucrative interest rate. He replied: “That is just because we do not have an Islamic government yet, it is not yet fully in control. But it will be soon.”

“Not yet” is the mood of these days – a hopeful “not yet”, a fearful “not yet”, an impatient “not yet.” The government of the Muslim Brotherhood is working hard on turning expectations into facts, however. They are struggling to gain control over the state, its institutions, the streets, the squares, the culture. In circles critical of the Brotherhood, the neologism akhwana “Brotherhoodisation” has become the keyword of the Ikhwan's attempt to establish dominance over all institutions of the state. But they have not been successful yet, and for the time being both those in support of Morsy and his government and those sceptical of or opposed to it have as the main evidence for their point of view that not much has happened yet.

The urgent problem, however, is that Morsy had promised that a lot would happen. The deadline was last week. Upon entering office, Morsy declared an ambitious yet very simple and uncontested One Hundred Days programme to improve the economy, to restore security, to improve traffic, to clean up the streets, to guarantee distribution of subsidised goods, etc. It was a programme tailored at gaining wide popular support, bare of any of the key ideological aims of the Brotherhood and focussed on problems that are generally recognised as urgent and important. On 6 October, on the occasion of the celebrations for the anniversary of the 1973 October war, a huge celebration was organised on Cairo Stadium, attended by honorary guests (importantly not including the leading figures of the military rule, Field Marshal Tantalize and General Annan whom Morsy in late August promoted out of office by making them presidential advisers, and more controversially including the Zumur brothers who had been involved in the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat and spent the entire Mubarak era in prison), a large crowd mainly made up of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the rest of the ranks filled by soldiers and policemen to fill up the stadium. His two-hour speech, broadcast live on state television, was only secondarily about the October War. First and foremost, it was political rally to mobilise support for the president and to convince the nation that his 100-days programme has been “successful up to 70 per cent.”

The reality looks less like the image Morsy depicted in his speech. There is a general sense that the security situation has improved (but a friend of mine got robbed in plain sight on a main street recently, and it is difficult to tell whether there really is less crime, or whether people are simply less anxious), and that the economy has slightly improved (but so far the improvement of the economy appears to be mainly because the presence of a president and a regular government gives people the confidence to invest again). Beyond that, the urgent affairs of Egypt are very much like they were a hundred days earlier, and some things are worse: Since August, the government is fighting a de-facto war against Jihadist insurgents in the Sinai. Also in the Sinai, Christian families in the border town of Rafah were threatened by Jihadists and told to leave the town. They stayed, but their situation remains precarious. Last Ramadan witnessed a disastrous electricity crisis with repeated long power cutouts in large cities.

Now that the hundred days are over, the way the new government tries to solve the nation's urgent problems begins to look increasingly haphazard. Most recently, the minister of local development has passed a regulation to limit the opening hours of shops (excluding pharmacies) to 10 pm., and of cafés and restaurants to 12 pm. In Egypt, a country that has a very night-oriented way of life, where people often work at very late hours, and where especially in poorer areas many cafés and shops are open day and night, this regulation appears strange to say the least. The official reason given for the regulation was saving electricity – but it does not seem very convincing, given that the demand for electricity is at its highest before 10 pm., not after. Prime minister Qandil defended the regulation, claiming that there is no other country in the world that does not regulate the opening hours of shops and cafés. Aside of the prime minister, I have so far not managed to hear anybody else speaking in support of the regulation. Everybody I meet finds the regulation ill-informed, disastrous for Egyptian lifestyle, bad for security (open shops and lots of people are the best way to make streets safe at night), and impossible to implement. Aside of being haphazard and ill-planned, this regulation also reveals a lot about the underlying idea of good urbanity among Egypt's new rulers. It is a vision oriented on Europe, America, and the Gulf States, informed by the lifestyle of the economical elites in well-secured, calm and motorised suburbs – the social class from which the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ministers of the government with few exceptions hail. In this regard, the policies of the Morsy era do not seem so far from those of the Mubarak era, dominated as they are by the life experience and horizon of economical elites who often experience the lively street culture of the less fortunate classes as disturbing chaos and dysfunctional informality, consequently seeing it as an obstacle to overcome instead of recognising it as a functioning social order.

The hundred days' programme addressed issues that are consensual. At a number of other points, the Ikhwan are beginning to show their true colour. Some cases – like the closing hours for shops – tells how close their understanding of policing public order is to that of the Mubarak system. Others – like the removal of sexual education and reproductive health curricula from schoolbooks, and the increasing number of lawsuits on the ground of “denigration of religions” – fit perfectly within the framework Islamist ideology and, disastrous though they are, are in no way surprising. Other issues, again, reveal a sharpening sense of confrontation between different political forces as the Ikhwan are trying to establish control, but are not yet successful. In this last regard, the last days have brought some surprises, and more can be expected.

“The Battle of Sheep”

For last Friday, demonstrations were announced by liberal and leftist revolutionary groups against Morsy and his government. Then, two days before that date, all accused in the Camel Battle (on 2/2/2011 when supporters of Mubarak tried to storm Tahrir Square) court case were declared innocent for lack of evidence. Predictably, this raised quite some sentiments, but it also offered the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis the occasion to declare their participation in what they deemed a demonstration for the sake of purifying the judiciary. Thursday evening, the news broke that Morsy has transferred the public prosecutor – who was widely deemed responsible for the failure of almost all court cases about the killing of protesters during the revolution - to the post of the Egyptian ambassador to Vatican. For the moment, it seemed that Morsy had gained another victory in establishing control over the state, and now the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi participation in the demonstration was to be in support and celebration of Morsy.

Then things went badly out of hand. Already the previous night there were verbal exchanges and minor fights between supporters and opponents of Morsy on Tahrir Square, and the next morning witnessed a veritable battle of stone-throwing between the competing fractions. I was not there, but D., a long-standing revolutionary from the village in the Nile Delta who moved to Cairo last spring, was. This is his account:

D. went to Tahrir early in the morning, and by that time the revolutionaries were few in numbers, and became quickly outnumbered after significantly larger (but not huge – 500 according to one estimate) numbers of Muslim Brotherhood supporters entered the square. The revolutionaries chanted against Morsy and the Brotherhood with chants like “Down with the rule of the Supreme Guide” and “Sell the revolution, Badie” (referring to the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, the real strong man behind Morsy), and the Brotherhood supporters reacted by demolishing the stage set up by the Popular Current of former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi (in front of running television cameras) , and Brotherhood supporters forced the revolutionaries out of the square to Muhammad Mahmoud St., where D. and his comrades faced a rain of rocks thrown at them from the square and were forced to hold out there. By this time he had to go to work, and as he returned from work a couple of hours later, he encountered a group of protesters on al-Qasr al-Ayini street who had tried to enter the square but were forced back and did not want to get involved in fighting. He managed to convince them that it was necessary to reestablish the revolutionary presence in the square, and they managed to enter the the square without a fight. For a while the square was split into two parts, the Brotherhood supporters on the central circle, and the revolutionaries on the pavement on the side of Downtown. Both groups were chanting their slogans but no fighting was taking place, until more marches of the revolutionary fraction started to arrive and tried to enter the square from Talaat Harb Street and Abdelmoneim Riad Square. Rocks being thrown both ways, the revolutionaries who were already on the square tried to go between but without success, and a street battle endured between for an hour and a half, with neither side being able to make advances, until at six in the afternoon when the Brotherhood supporters at once all withdrew (upon order by their leadership, it later turned out), and headed to hold a protest in front of the high court against the public prosecutor. The revolutionaries took over the square, and two of the minibuses that had transported brotherhood supporters were set on fire.

The Muslim Brotherhood's version was of course different. In different statements the previous evening, members of their leadership declared that the Brotherhood had not been present at the square in the first place, and that they had withdrawn in order to calm down the situation. The next day, the brotherhood's press organ al-Hurriya wa al-'Adala came up with an official version of their account, according to which it was the Ikhwan who had been attacked by an unspecified party, and that there was an unprecedented media campaign going on to defame the Islamists.

The critics of the Brotherhood were outraged. This was not the first time that Brotherhood supporters had either compelled their opponents to leave the square, or tried to make their slogans unheard by the sheer power of superior sound systems. But it was the first time that Brotherhood supporters had entered such a direct confrontation with their opponents. The arrogance with which they demolished the Popular Current's stage and tried to prevent their opponents from entering the square was only topped by the lies of their leadership, first denying involvement and then putting blame on an unknown party – echoing the “third party” theory so routinely used by the military rulers in 2011 and 2012. The Brotherhood certainly showed itself a worthy successor of Mubarak's National Democratic Party

This is not to deny that quite a few revolutionaries were rather happy to enter a fight with the Ikhwan, too. But from all witness accounts and reports I have read, it appears that Brotherhood supporters and Salafis were the initial attacking party – and the Ikhwan leadership's refusal to say by whom they were attacked and their vague references to an unknown party only further supports the revolutionaries' version of the events.

The revolutionaries quickly started calling the incident “the Battle of Sheep” in an ironical reference to the “Camel Battle” - a name that for draws a direct comparison between the Brotherhood and the NDP, and furthermore claims that the supporters of the Brotherhood (who arrived on Tahrir with minibuses provided by the Freedom and Justice Party, and left the square at once when their leadership called them back) are sheep-like creatures that follow the whistle of the shepherd and lack a will of their own.

The Ikhwan are doing their best to depict themselves as victims, and they may yet take the events as a pretext to silence opposition towards them on other occasions. But for the moment, many revolutionaries experience the battle as a victory. They had been pushed out of the square a few times by the Islamists, and this was the first time they ended up dominating the square by the end of the day. And although the Ikhwan are really good at explaining things their way, the incident certainly are a serious media setback for them – the more so since it was accompanied by a another setback.

While fighting endured on Tahrir Square, the judiciary had taken a united and firm stance against the dismissal of the public prosecutor. It also turned out that legally the president was only allowed to replace the prosecutor in agreement with the judiciary. By this time, Brotherhood supporters were commanded from Tahrir Square to demonstrate in front of the High Court. Heated rounds of negotiated evolved, and on Saturday noon, Morsy had to admit his defeat and the public prosecutor could stay in the office. The official version was that the president had given his consent to a petition by the Supreme Judicial Council, but the Council declared that they had not sent any such petition.

While the “Battle of Sheep” was a struggle about the power to speak in the name of Tahrir Square, the struggle between the president and the prosecutor was one between the Ikhwan trying to establish control over the state, and an institution of the old system successfully defending its power. Unlike in the transitional period when the Muslim Brothers could play a tactical game of changing alliances with the revolutionaries and the military rulers, they now face opposition on two fronts. They still have some of their revolutionary credibility, and they are very, very good at mobilising shows of mass support (of the kind they did on 6 October). But as they become the ruling party, it gets increasingly difficult to exploit that credibility. At the same time, they are officially in charge of the state, but in practice many institutions of the state remain hostile to them. Today on the train to Cairo, I happened to sit together with three police officers, two of them in civil. Noticing that I was reading the Brotherhood's organ Al-Hurriya wa al-'Adala, they expressed their clear dislike of the Brotherhood, were very happy about the success of the public prosecutor in holding his position, and argued that the Camel Battle court case was all based on rumours anyway, and that it was a spontaneous action of the tourism entrepreneurs of Nazlat al-Samman. They didn't look like they would be a very willing executive of Morsy's government.

What can one dare to hope now?

That said, it seems unlikely that the Brotherhood would be out of power any time soon – and in fact, it is not even desirable. The question, instead, is to what extent they will be successful in establishing control, and what other dynamics will be taking place in Egyptian society. I try to explain what I mean with the help of four recent conversations.

First, there is the pessimistic view. It was expressed by M., my journalist friend in Cairo. He expects that the Ikhwan will be able to push through a constitution of their liking – and some revolutionaries and liberals will boycott the constitutional assembly in order to deny its legitimacy, but it won't make a difference because it will be in force anyway, and laws will be passed and the state run according to it. Sooner and later there will be parliamentary elections and the Ikhwan are an election machine able to mobilise a lot of voters under any conditions, and they will not shy away from using all means necessary to secure a parliamentary majority. Once firmly in power, they will never give it up voluntarily again. Furthermore, the opportunists who are always on the side of power are already busy siding with the Brotherhood. And, M. adds, the people are tired, the prices are rising and although the economy is recovering a little they are too busy with existential things. There will be no revolution against the Ikhwan like there was against Mubarak, at least not any time soon: “It looks like they are going to stay with us for a long while.”

But one of the twists of the Brotherhood era is that the lines of political opposition are being redrawn. I know some people who had little interest in politics even during the revolution, but who have developed a much more sharply oppositional attitude since Morsy's election. F., owner of a café in a small town, thinks that there may soon be a new uprising against the Ikhwan very well – and he in fact hopes it – because they have so disastrously failed to run the affairs of the country. His business suffered severely from the wave of electricity cuts throughout Ramadan, and the government's plan to limit the opening hours, if implemented, will be equally disastrous. He says: Yes, the people want to be left in peace and get back to work and business, but the government is failing precisely in that point, and people are getting angry again.

The question, however, is what would follow from a new uprising or from a fall of Morsy. D., on his turn, does not expect the Brotherhood to leave power any time soon – in fact he hopes them to stay for at least four years, and as far as he is concerned, they should go through with the Brotherhoodisation of the state, because only that way they can lose their aura as a victimised oppositional movement, and Egyptian people can have enough time to understand how far removed from Islam Islamist politics really are. Furthermore, he adds, if the Ikhwan would lose power now, it would most likely be in favour of the supporters of the old system who have been able to organise their ranks again after their temporary disarray in 2011, and who still command considerable power over many parts of the state. The revolutionaries are currently neither able nor competent to seize power. While expecting the Ikhwan to stay in power, D. is hopeful for different reasons. He perceives a significant change in political consciousness of ordinary people in a way that, he argues, is bound to put Egypt to a better path. But it will not happen now, and we may not be the ones who profit from it, he says. He points out that this does not only involve the revolutionaries who have been able to transform themselves through the experience of uprising. It is a change that even involves those who once lacked an oppositional consciousness, or even were close to the system. The judges' successful power struggle with Morsy is not only about guarding the old system, he says: It is also about the judiciary developing a different self-understanding as an institution of the state under changing governments and presidents. And he says that in many daily encounters, walking the popular districts of the city, and in is work, he finds people critical, and aware of what politics means in a way that was still lacking during the revolution. Importantly, he himself has the feeling that he can do something, in his work, in his studies, in the many political debates he develops with people on a daily base.

In 2011, D. was one of the first people I know who reached the frustrated conclusion that the revolution had failed. A year later, when most young revolutionaries now also think that the revolution failed, D's new-found optimism is striking. It is an optimism, however, that depends on the continuity of a relatively free and pluralistic political space. A return of heavy-handed repression and fear can still falsify it. The Ikhwan are the power to reckon with for the years to come, but the decisive question is how much power they will have, and what shape that power will take.

The fourth conversation took place online between me an Iranian friend who pointed out to me how much the development in Egypt reminds him of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. It is not the same, he says, but it has many similarities: The revolution in Iran was based on a wider popular consensus from right to left. The Islamists presented themselves consensus-oriented and pluralistic at first, but upon seizing power started to systematically eliminate and marginalise their opponents. This is an important point of comparison, and it was certainly not taken seriously enough in spring 2011 by all those commentators who stated that Egypt will not be like Iran, when instead it would have been necessary to ask what can be done in order to prevent Egypt from going Iran's path. However, there is an important difference, and a paradoxical one: I think that one of the greatest failures of the Egyptian revolution may turn out to be one its main assets in the future: the lack of revolutionary justice. One of the key themes of mobilisation ever since the revolution began has been that the leaders of the old system and the perpetrators of crimes against protesters must be judged and punished. Almost none of that has happened, and practically all who were responsible for killing protesters in January 2011 have been acquitted, except for the life sentence for Mubarak, which was nevertheless a major disappointment for all those who wanted to see him hanged. After the Mubarak verdict, many revolutionaries reached the conclusion that Mubarak should have received the same treatment as Gaddafi did, that true revolutionary justice can only take place at the lampposts of Tahrir Square, and that the first step of the revolution should have been a thorough purge of the state apparatus. However, they may eventually consider themselves lucky for the failure of revolutionary justice, because such justice is extremely prone to turn against the revolutionaries themselves – and often with even greater brutality – as soon as one of the revolutionary parties has seized power. Already now, hundreds of protesters are still held in prison (and it is unclear whether the president's recent pardon on all revolution-related crimes will actually include them), but so far the leading figures of the different fractions, be it revolutionary, Islamist, or old system, have remained free and largely unharmed. No matter how troubling the failure of justice towards many of the most outrageously criminal figures of the Mubarak era may be, it also sets a precedent that makes it more difficult to make opposition leaders disappear in prison or get shot on open street.

The struggle over control continues, and while the Muslim Brotherhood definitely has the upper hand, it is yet undecided, and in fact difficult to decide because it is a struggle of three blocks – Islamist, old system, revolutionary (the latter being the weakest of the three) – and as soon as one block seizes power, it faces the opposition of the two others, so that the struggle may continue for a long while still. And increasing political confrontation brought by the brutality of the Military Rule, the tactical manoeuvres and determination to power of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the radicalisation of the liberal/left revolutionary block has made it increasingly difficult to find any sort of consensual base across these blocks. However, while this is the situation of party politics and activist circles, ordinary political life in Egypt is still not very firmly entrenched along block lines, and people who are not committed supporters of any given block, tend to have complex, multiple and more open-ended visions and positions. I therefore conclude this otherwise very inconclusive essay with one little item that displays the complexity of everyday political allegiances.

While the “Battle of Sheep” took place in Cairo, I was attending the annual festival (mulid) of the great Muslim saint Ahmad al-Badawi in the city of Tanta. Contrary to last year when the festival had suffered from the general sense of anxiety and insecurity, it was quite successful this year (the Muslim Brotherhood has been traditionally been sharply opposed to mulid festivals, but so far Morsy's government has been rather busy with other business). A new cheap sales hit made rounds at the mulid: Colour posters with the portrait of Mubarak's predecessor Anwar al-Sadat in military uniform. Displaying the portrait of Sadat in one's shop is a fairly clear stance against the Ikhwan, and also a more ambiguous show of allegiance with the state of the Free Officers – ambiguous because for one part it is can be a way to show support to the old system, while at the same time it is also a way to take distance from Mubarak and his era. Sadat also enjoys some ambivalent sympathy in the revolutionary circles: While he stands for the beginning of the ruthless privatization policies, for the oppression of the left wing in favour of the Islamists, and for the much hated Camp David peace treaties, he is nevertheless also the hero of the October War of 1973 (although the revolutionary daily al-Tahrir recently devoted whole two pages in their 6 October issue to questioning this image, and claiming that the counter-attack across the canal and the resulting intrusion of Israeli forces on the west bank of the canal was made possible by tactical errors by Anwar al-Sadat and the “totalitarian” structure of command that compelled the military leadership to implement Sadat's plan against their better knowledge), and a secular hero assassinated by Islamist militants. My friends from the revolutionary leftist/liberal circles in Alexandria found it outrageous that Morsy in his two hours long speech on the occasion of 6 October failed to mention Anwar al-Sadat with a single word. Displaying the portrait of Anwar al-Sadat does therefore more than expressing explicit disagreement with Morsy and implicit allegiance with the pre-revolutionary order. It is also expressive of a search for something like a consensual base in a moment where it is very difficult to find one.

Some social science of the presidential elections

I have usually avoided writing on this blog when not in Egypt, because its value, if any, lies in the proximity to events, moods, and everyday encounters as the stuff for some preliminary anthropological theory of the revolutionary process. With the presidential elections, I now feel compelled to make an exception and try to offer some analysis from the distanced vantage point of a cozy coffee house in Europe. The election results not only determine the political future of Egypt: they also provide an amazing wealth of sociological data that could be telling about the general social dynamics in Egypt of which the revolution in Egypt is a part. In consequence, this post is more sociological than ethnographic, trying to look at some interesting societal tendencies on the basis of the statistical evidence provided by the election results.

The result, to start with, it is nothing short of a disaster in terms of Egypt's immediate political future. The second round of the elections on 16 and 17 June will see a face-off of Mohammed Morsy (25% of the vote in the first round)) of the Muslim brotherhood and Ahmad Shafiq (24,3%), Mubarak's last prime minister. This result wasn't foreseen by most observers - I myself gave a completely mistaken prediction in an interview on Finnish radio on Wednesday, anticipating a lead of Amr Moussa (11,4%) and Abouel Fotouh (17,3%) who, however, ended up 5^th and 4^th, beaten by the socialist Sabbahi who with an amazing campaign and with very little money managed to gain the biggest part of the revolutionary vote, reaching a completely unexpected third place with 21% of the vote. Unexpected as it was for many, the result appears to be a largely genuine expression of the voters' will, even if it does have a margin of error due to minor rigging here and there (which unfortunately also means that we will never know with certainty whether Ahmad Shafiq really got more votes than Hamdeen Sabbahi). There is still the tiny chance that the outcome of a large number of polling stations can be contested because of irregularities and rigging – but Shafiq is 764,000 votes ahead of Sabbahi, and it is probably too large a gap to overcome by legal means.

As far as it comes to presidential elections, the revolution is now over, and we enter the age of battles of power between two powerful blocks that are fundamentally not committed to democracy. Whoever of the two wins, there is every reason to expect the worst from his rule. (The best of scenarios is an ongoing and undecided power struggle between the Brotherhood and the Military that will allow the revolutionary movement to gain ground because neither of the two powers is strong enough to eliminate political opposition.)

The elections might have had a different outcome. Much of the result was due to quite specific circumstances. The disqualification of former vice president Omar Suleyman and the Salafi preacher Hazem Salah ended up reducing the fragmentation of the pro-system and Islamist votes, which worked to the advantage of Morsy and Shafiq. At the same time, the competition between the two revolutionary candidates Sabbahi and Abouel Fotouh fragmented the revolutionary vote, with tragic consequences (although neither one of them would have actually been able to unite all the votes of the two – their ideological agendas are too far apart for that). The decision of major Salafi groups to back Abouel Fotouh alienated a big part of his leftist and liberal supporters, which in turn turned into Sabbahi's advantage – but not to a sufficient degree. In the end, the result is what it is, but these elections certainly have been one of those visible moments of contingency in history where it is very clear that things might have just as well gone differently. But now back to the facts:

The data from the election tells that there are interesting things going on in Egypt. Some of them, more slowly and less dramatically, are working to the advantage of the revolutionary current, and give every reason to expect that things will remain in movement in Egypt for years to come.

1. On the basis of the election results, three political and electoral blocks of roughly equal size emerge: 1) the old system (represented by Ahmad Shafiq and Amr Moussa), promising cautious transformation, and standing in the tradition of Mubarak's authoritarian neoliberalism; 2) the Islamists (represented by Ahmad Morsy and a part of Abouel Fotouh's voters – AF was backed by a part of the Salafis which ended up costing him a lot of support in leftist and liberal circles), promising a religious-moral turn but essentially committed to Mubarak's neoliberal policies; and 3) - partly overlapping with the Islamists - the revolutionaries (represented by the Nasserist socialist Hamdeen Sabbahi and the liberal Islamist Abouel Fotouh), demanding a fundamental overhaul of the political and economical system, and representing a variety of ideological positions, including liberal, Nasserist, socialist, and Islamist). So in terms of popular support, no groups is clearly superior to the others.

(No, I do not count the Muslim Brotherhood to the revolutionaries. They have proven to be highly opportunistic politicians committed to winning the political game but not committed to fundamental systemic change. They have ridden the wave of the revolution when it suited them, and sold the revolution when it served their interests. There are Islamists who are with the revolution, but the Brotherhood is not among them.)

2. Although the immediate outcome of the elections is a defeat for the revolutionaries, the overall support of the revolutionary fraction has grown. In the constitutional referendum, the „No“ vote was 23%, which until now has been the best indication we had about the overall support of a demand for a fundamental change of the political system. In the parliamentary elections, the vote of liberal, leftist, and revolutionary Islamist groups together was in the same order of magnitude as the „no“ vote. In the presidential elections, in contrast, the two revolutionary candidates Sabbahi and Abouel Fotouh gained together nearly 40% of the vote. Partly this is due to a part of the Salafis shifting towards the revolutionary spectrum lately, but there is more to it: Both Abouel Fotouh and Sabbahi were able to address people at a large scale beyond the immediate circles of revolutionary enthusiasts. While the revolutionary block has lost the presidential race, with Hamdeen Sabbahi it has also gained a leader who is able to gather mass support without making concessions either to the Islamists or to those afraid of change – a feat that seemed to be impossible to realise after the constitutional referendum and the parliamentary elections. Sabbahi may still become the president of Egypt - in five or ten years' time.

3. - The election was decided in favour of Shafiq and Morsy in the countryside and in small and medium-sized towns where Sabbahi and Abouel Fotouh were not able to reach people on an individual level through family and other networks the way Morsy and Shafiq were. Especially the Muslim Brotherhood has proven itself as a veritable election machine capable of bringing people from their homes to the polling stations, and campaigning even inside the polling stations to persuade the undecided. However, and this very important, they are not having their greatest success in those milieus where they have their strongest social basis – that is, in the cities of northern Egypt – but mainly in the countryside and in southern Egypt. Like with Shafiq, their success in the elections relies to a significant degree on people who vote not on the basis of established ideological positions but of personal and clientelist relations (who knows whom, who can help whom) and expect solutions to immediate local or personal problems. For Shafiq, this is perfectly in line with established NDP practice, but for the Muslim Brotherhood, it is a contradiction of sorts, and shows that while their power in rural areas is great, in their original milieus they are in trouble.

Shafiq, in contrast to Morsy, also did well in Cairo which, with its proximity to the centre of power, interestingly has lots of both revolutionaries as well as hardcore supporters of the old system: Sabbahi 28,7%; Shafiq 27 %; Morsy 17%; Abouel Fotouh 16%; Moussa 11,3%.

4. - Both Morsy and Shafiq were totally defeated in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city that until now was thought to be an Islamist stronghold. This is the official result for Alexandria:

Sabbahi 34%; Abouel Fotouh 22%; Moussa 16%; Morsy 15%; Shafiq 12% (and others 1%)

This was not entirely a surprise, because already in the constitutional referendum in March 2011 Alexandria had some of the highest „no“ votes in all Egypt, close to 35% (both supporters of the old system as well as the Muslim Brotherhood rallied for a „yes“ vote). Rather than being an Islamist stronghold, Alexandria now has the revolutionary liberal/left as its most prominent political current (in terms of ideological position and public opinion, that is, not in terms of organisational power. In the latter regard the Islamists are vastly superior). This does not mean that the depiction of Alexandria as an Islamist stronghold is false – I think that in the past, it was true. Alexandria's position as a rapidly growing city of 4 or 5 millions somewhat out of the focus of the government's sight makes it a structurally oppositional city that suffers from neither the conservative inertia of the rural regions nor the vested interests and proximity to political power of the capital. This made it the perfect site for Islamist groups to develop and prove their political and social power in the past decades, and it has also made it the place where Sabbahi's revolutionary message with Nasserist undertones and populist appeal („One of us“ was his election slogan) would be most successful. Alexandria is a vanguard city when it comes to social and political dynamics in Egypt. It is worth keeping an eye on it.

5. - The support of the revolutionary fraction is heavily concentrated to cities, but not necessarily to the middle classes. Both in Cairo as well as in Alexandria, Sabbahi also gained a lot of votes in working-class areas. Structurally speaking, there seems to be a relationship between urbanisation and progressive politics that goes beyond the middle-class theory of democratisation. This puts the future government of either Morsy or Shafiq in front of a dilemma: To maintain power, they rely on a constituency that is often rural and poor. If the future government's economical and social policies are successful, this will lead to the growth of milieus that structurally favour progressive, anti-system politics, and sooner or later the future government will face new unrest – and stronger opposition. If its policies are unsuccesful, however, it will face new unrest much sooner.

6. - The revolutionary candidates were generally very weak in in rural areas, with one very interesting exception: Kafr El Sheikh, a largely rural province in the northern Nile Delta. Otherwise, the Nile Delta region was generally dominated by Shafiq (mostly first) and Morsy (mostly second), except in provinces with high degree of urbanisation like Daqahliya (which has two big cities, Mahalla and Mansoura) where Sabbahi came second behind Shafiq with a very narrow margin. In Kafr El Sheikh, however, he gained an overwhelming victory with a stunning 62% of the vote. Kafr El Sheikh is Sabbahi's home region, which is one reason for his success but not the whole story – Morsy did not win in his home region, and Abouel Fotouh was positively defeated in his. More importantly, Kafr El Sheikh has a history of leftist activism in the 1970's and 80's and although the old socialist networks had become inactive in the past two decades, they still could be reactivated for Sabbahi's campaign. In the village in northeastern Kafr El Sheikh where I do much of my fieldwork, those networks made it possible that in late April, the village was suddenly plastered by Sabbahi posters. At first, this was thanks to just six Nasserist families, but the spark soon spread also to the non-Nasserist village revolutionaries (who had formed themselves in spring of 2011 but had little practical success and played no role in the parliamentary elections), and many of them joined the Sabbahi campaign. The same happened in villages and towns throughout the province, with quite some effect as the results from Kafr El Sheikh show:

Sabbahi 62%; Morsy 17%; Abouel Fotouh 9 %; Shafiq 8%; Moussa 4%

Morsy and Shafiq won because their campaigns were able to link into family and clientelistic networks. The revolutionary candidates were successful either in cities where people are more likely to vote on the basis of ideology than networks, or in places where they could rely on pre-existing networks. While voting on the basis of ideology is likely to increase in the coming years (on the condition that there are free elections, that is), the revolutionary current can only reach majorities if it can rely on both ideology and networks. This means that if the revolutionary current does not want to wait for demographic change to solve the issue in their favour in 10 to 20 years, their most formidable task is to build those networks, and I'm not sure whether they are up to it.

7. - Yesterday evening the story started to spread that the Christian vote, influenced by the Coptic Orthodox Church that is very close to the old system, was instrumental for Shafiq making it to the second place. However, the most important base for Shafiq's succcess were not the Upper (i.e. southern) Egyptian provinces with their large Christian populations. Shafiq did well there but Morsy was the winner in most of Upper Egypt, and Shafiq got his most votes (in terms of absolute numbers) in the Nile Delta, most overwhelmingly so in the central Delta province of Sharqiya that has no remarkable Christian population: Shafiq 33,5%; Morsy 27,5%; Moussa 16 %; Sabbahi 12 %; Abouel Fotouh 11 %).

(the source of these calculations is this: http://tab3.me/Inside#.T7_4V8XvpUY - preliminary results but largely congruent with official final results)
(See also this overview, based on the official final results: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentMulti/42975/Multimedia.aspx )

To conclude, my expectation is that both Shafiq or Morsy will be really bad for Egypt, but that they may not be able to be quite as bad as they would like to. Shafiq will mean the consolidation of the military rule that has wrecked Egypt. Morsy is now trying to mobilise the revolutionary vote for him, and some (like the novelist Alaa El Aswany) are going along with that. But everything that the Brotherhood has done in the past year and so indicates that as soon as they gain power, they will drop, marginalise, and - if necessary - recklessly repress their former allies. However, the social and political landscape of Egypt as the outcome of the election shows it, indicates that no new leader will be able to gain the hegemonic and unquestioned position which Mubarak once had (before his authority began to crumble around 2005). Especially in the major cities, the future president will face a largely oppositional population, and it will be a tough job to govern Egypt in the coming years.

At the same time, there is no question that these elections have been the most serious and most irreversible defeat for the revolution since it began. There may not be another chance for the revolutionaries to gain power in free elections – I see no reason why either Shafiq or Morsy would have any interest to ever have free elections again unless they are forced to. The path of a peaceful revolution has come to a temporary end, and wrestling power back from either Morsy or Shafiq will likely require more than good campaigning.

Nevertheless, both Alexandria and Kafr El Sheikh (and Port Said, by the way, where Sabbahi also was first) provide crucial lections of how the revolutionaries can do it right. The path to power may begin in protests on the squares, but it must pass through the networks of people's ordinary lives and worlds. In at least three provinces in Egypt, the supporters of the revolution have found solutions to this problem. They offer lessons to be studied and learned from that may help to turn this defeat into future victories.

The presidential theatre

(Addition, 15 April in the morning: Oh the pleasure of getting it all wrong again. Just hours after I wrote this note, the supreme electoral council excluded Omar Suleyman, Khairat al-Shater and Abu Ismail from running for presidency. Unless some of them will be able to successfully appeal the decision, it looks like the main electoral battle is going to be Abu el-Futuh against Amr Musa - which already sounds a bit better than what I expected in the afternoon. - But then again, there is good reason to expect that dirty game by the Military Council was involved, and will be involved again...

But premature as my political analysis was once again, I think this note still has something to say about the mood of these days. And I still do think that the revolution has failed in an important, deeper sense even if things, against all odds, go well.)

***

For weeks, there has been essentially one topic of political discussion in Egypt: The presidential elections. It has been quite a theatre, with lots of political game, lawsuits, and last-minute surprises. Now the list of candidates stands - although some changes still can happen because of pending lawsuits - and the contours of the political battle around presidency are taking shape. And it is a dark and frightening shape, giving much reason to fear that the presidential elections will mark the definite point of failure of the 25 January revolution.

Just when Egypt’s revolutionaries had learned to fear the populist power of the Salafi presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail (whose enthusiastic supporters have plastered the country with posters showing his bearded face and who almost got kicked out of the race because his mother may have held American citizenship), the very last day of registrations for presidential candidates taught them that there are worse things to fear: the former head of secret service and Mubarak’s short-time vice president Omar Suleyman, the shared menace of all opponents of the Mubarak system. Omar Suleyman had denied that he would be running just a day before, and then suddenly handed in his registration, and collected more than 40,000 signatures in his support in just one day. After the controversial candidacy of Khairat al-Shater by the Muslim brotherhood just a few days earlier, this was the second and more significant surprise.

In a matter of days, Omar Suleyman has completely changed the nature of the presidential game, and according to a representative survey by the daily Al Masry Al Youm that was published today, he is now the most popular candidate, followed by Abdel Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh (the only revolutionary candidate who has any chances to win) and Hazem Abu Ismail. However, 38,1 % of those who answered to the survey did not yet know whom they would vote, and their vote will be decisive. However, the survey gives some interesting statistical information that is telling also about those who have not yet made up their mind. Omar Suleyman is especially popular among people with low education and income in rural areas - the same constituencies that also have the highest number of undecided voters. These were the voters who have been most disconnected from the revolutionary movement, most exposed to state media, and who in the Parliamentary elections mostly put their hope in the Islamist parties - parties that after few months of parliamentary work have already lost much of their aura of piety and moral integrity. Omar Suleyman is also very popular among those members of the urban middle classes who from the beginning on experienced the revolution as a chaotic threat to the orderly way of life and who now see in the former vice president an experienced and reliable politician who is able to steer the country back to the right course.

No matter how much antagonism there is between the radical revolutionary camp that has insisted on an ongoing confrontation with the Military Council, and the more opportunistic Islamist groups that dominate the parliament and who since the parliamentary elections have been opposed to demonstrations (until changing their mind last week), Omar Suleyman has given them a new shared enemy. On the suburban train three days ago, I overheard a group of middle aged men with Salafi beards discussing the elections, and one of them saying: “If Omar Suleyman becomes the president, then the prisons will be full again, with Islamists, liberals, socialists - we will be all together again.”

But a shared enemy has not brought back the unity of the early days of the revolution. Yesterday, the Muslim Brotherhood and a number of Salafi groups called for demonstrations against military rule and the candidature of Omar Suleyman, which was met with ridicule by the supporters of ongoing revolution who had learned to know the Muslim Brotherhood in particular as an extremely opportunistic group that takes whatever position suits their momentaneous interest. In Alexandria, a large group of protesters gathered at al-Qa’id Ibrahim mosque at the time of Friday prayer, but the revolutionary block was as good as absent, except for a small group of people who were holding up signs provocatively asking where the Muslim Brothers had been when the revolutionaries were being killed in Muhammad Mahmoud and Qasr al-‘Ayni streets, and what the parliament has done for the sake of change. These signs caused quite some debate and commotion. I didn’t stay to see how the debate and the demonstration continued, for I was on my way to meet friends in Kafr al-Zayyat, an industrial town in the Nile Delta to see friends - and found everybody talking about the president as well.

Kafr al-Zayyat happens to be the home region of Abou al-Futuh, and his posters cover the walls of the city and surrounding villages. But the inhabitants of the city and its surrounding villages are far from united. On the minibus on the countryside, the driver, sporting a Salafi beard, showed him as an enthusiastic supported of Abu Ismail, and very happy about the recent court decision that the sheikh’s mother was Egyptian after all. Discussing with a passenger on the front seat, he argued that if only Egypt gets a president who applies the Law of God in full, all the economical and moral problems will be solved, graduates will get work, corruption will end, and the economical situation will improve in just two years’ time. The passenger, a civil servant by his looks, agreed about the urgency of the problems of labour market, corruption and economy, but argued that he would cast his vote for Abu al-Futuh whom he described as “wasati” representing a religious and modern middle way.

In a café in the centre of the city, I was present at a more heated debate about the presidential candidate with two young men, one of them running a private business, and a determined supporter of the revolution, and the other an army officer. D., the army officer, argued that he would vote for Omar Suleyman whom he described as the “best among the bad” because he is an experienced statesman able to run the affairs of the country - and added that basically everybody in the military circles support him. For D., the choice was one between the Salafi populist Abu Ismail and the experienced and responsible Suleyman - a binary that is also presented by parts of the state media and that, by ignoring Abu al-Futuh, reduces the choice to one between fundamentalism and security. M, the revolutionary, countered that while he was against Abu Ismail, Omar Suleyman certainly would be the worst of choices, a leading member of the clique responsible for wrecking the country before and after the revolution, and choosing him would be equal to choosing Mubarak. More than that, he argued, Abu Ismail maybe bad, but Omar Suleyman is not only bad. More than that, he is a traitor who sold Egypt’s interests for the sake of security cooperation with the USA and Israel.

Unsurprisingly, the debate remained inconclusive, and neither of the two would change his mind. In any case, the elections will be decided by those who do not yet know whom to vote. And Egypt’s voters have proved to take their decision in the last minute, often even while standing in line for the polling station. But in all likelihood (unless the law just passed by the parliament banning high functionaries of the old system from running for presidency is not overruled by the constitutional court) the second round of elections will see Omar Suleyman against one of the three Islamist candidates: The Salafi Abu Ismail, the revolutionary Abu al-Futuh, or the Muslim Brother Khairat al-Shater. This on the assumption of more or less fair elections. However, the way in which Omar Suleyman, clearly with the backing of the military and secret service establishments, entered the competition in one day, gives every reason to assume that he is the Military Council’s man for presidency, and that the military will do everything they can to facilitate his victory. Add to that the marginalisation of the radical revolutionary camp along with the gradual loss of credibility of the large Islamist parties, and it looks very likely that the presidential elections will be the final nail to the coffin of the 25 January revolution.

If this will be the case - and I will be happy to be proven wrong - the question arises: Why did the January 25 revolution fail?

Of course, the revolution has been successful on many fronts. It brought down Mubarak and his family. It has created a powerful culture of discontent and creative thinking about new ways to live and to organise society. After long years of struggle, it has brought Islamist groups to new power. But politically, it has already failed, and only a (rather unlikely) election victory of Abu al-Futuh can still turn it into a political success. The original demand spoken out by the protesters on Tahrir and other squares during the first days of the revolution was not only to remove Hosni Mubarak, but to change the ways in which the country was being governed. However, one year after the beginning of the revolution, those who are serious about changing the ways the country is being governed have proven themselves as unable to seize power, and those able to seize power have proven themselves as unwilling to change the ways in which the country is being governed.

The record of the radical revolutionary camp is poor in terms of both organisation and popular mobilisation, but then this seems to be often the destiny of the crazy few who start revolutions - their power, if any, will be a cultural and social one of nurturing a new generation of highly educated and highly critical people in key social positions. The problem, however, is that the young revolutionaries are often very unaware of the struggles of the past, and ill-equipped to avoid repeating past defeats, a problem articulated by an older professor at a literary salon attended by young, largely bourgeois audience in Alexandria. While the organisers of the salon, most of them between 20 and 30, were full of enthusiasm about the break with a de-politicized past, the older professor argued: “I see you making the same demands I made fifty years ago, and I’m very afraid that after fifty years of struggle and imprisonment, you in turn will find another young guy at the podium, making the same demands.”

As for those able to seize the power: The army should have never been trusted in the first place, and those people - including myself - who for few weeks were optimistic about the positive role of the military have been taught a bitter lesson, a lesson that has cost hundreds of lives. Most bitter, however, is the record of the Muslim brotherhood that in the course of just one year has step by step sold the cause of revolution for the sake of political power, so much as to gradually discredit itself before even gaining power. They still do have enough credit to exert power from the parliament and the cabinet (and who knows, maybe Shater still has a chance in the presidential game after all), but they are already on their way of transforming from an religious-political oppositional organisation into an opportunistic ruling party along the lines of Mubarak’s NDP, and by now many of the most respectable and trustworthy cadres of Brotherhood have either left it, or have been kicked out. With their more populistic approach, the Salafis may be able to profit from the problems the Brotherhood faces, but they, too, are intimately embedded in the clientelist politics of family alliances, favouritism, only with the pious vision of doing all that “without violating the Law of God.”

On 10 February 2011, I wrote in this blog that whatever happens, whether there will democracy in Egypt, or an authoritarian rule reconsolidating its hold, the uprising is already a success because it has given birth to a significant - and socially and culturally powerful - part of the population who can no longer be governed the way they once were. By now, it seems that the more pessimistic of the two scenarios of relative success is the more likely one: a reconsolidation of military and secret service authoritarianism, or alternatively the consolidation of an Islamist-led rule that builds on the old structures rather than changing them. As said, this does not change the fact that the new powers-to-be will face a social and political opposition of a kind Mubarak only faced (and failed to address) for less than three weeks. It is something, a little victory that hopefully will pave the way for new struggles and greater victories to come. But it is so much less than might have been possible.

However, there is also a deeper problematic that is not so much related to the ways Egypt in particular is governed, but with conditions of living in the contemporary world as a whole. On a deeper level, the Arab revolution were not directed so much against the governments of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Asad, or Saleh, but were an expression of a deeper discontent about a sense of existence that deprives one of one’s dignity, humanity, and freedom while at the same time promising their fulfilment.

The Arab revolutions of 2011 are perhaps best understood as a prelude for something that is yet to come, something that emerged under particularly sharp and oppressive conditions of frustrated promises of consumer capitalism and oppressive authoritarianism in the Arab world. By aiming their anger at the presidents and their cliques, however, the revolutionary movements have failed to name the original discontent. There are some leftists also in Egypt who are pointing at neoliberal capitalism as the core cause of the problem, but their analysis, too, may fall short of the problematic. And in any case, their analysis has not been translated into an instinctively convincing common sense of discontent and demand.

Whoever will rule in Egypt in the years to come will continue the neoliberal policies of the past decades, and will further intensify the existential discontent of living in a high capitalist world under the continuous pressure of growth and consumption, a world were precisely those things that offer temporary satisfaction - buying things, material comfort, revivalist religiosity, expectation of social ascendancy - are the same things that also increase the sense of pressure, alienation, and demoralising competitiveness that people experience. It is a problem not limited to Egypt or the Arab world - it shared also by people living in more privileged conditions as shown by the way the revolutionary spirit was taken over by the Occupy movement and others (with even less success, eventually). However, by the very real power of consumption to actually provide material comfort and to thus carry the promise of existential comfort, it remains very difficult for those people who most suffer from the condition of the world as it is to stand up in protest to change it.

In short, both the early success and the eventual failure of the January 25 revolution have to do with the problem that there is something wrong with the way the whole world is working. But unable to name the discontent as we are (as said, I think the socialists only have a partial name for it), we are still far from actually solving it.